


The moon within your heart

by Katarik



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, POV Female Character, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-12 22:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5683444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah keeps dreaming of the ballroom. She's getting pretty tired of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The moon within your heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts).



The first time Sarah dreams of the ballroom, it’s perfectly ordinary, a playthrough of what she fuzzily remembers: masks and music and a cool gloved hand in hers, guiding her through the steps. She wakes up blinking at the ceiling, fluttering swirling skirts and feathers still at the edges of her mind, and shakes it off. Sarah doesn’t dream of the Labyrinth every night, but it isn’t uncommon. Even dreaming of its King isn’t as uncommon as she’d prefer. The thought has heat coming to her face as she brushes her teeth, and it’s hastily dismissed.

Sarah forgets about the dream almost completely as she clatters downstairs for breakfast. Her stepmother gives her a makeup set and the promise to teach her how to use it, Toby wishes her a happy birthday almost perfectly, her father gives her _Swordspoint_ and the new Mercedes Lackey; her mother, over the phone last week, had said she was sending a package, but there’s nothing at the table.

Sarah still sometimes catches herself rubbing her thumb at the base of her finger, where the ring isn’t now.

***

It occurs to her, waking up after the third birthday in a row where she’s dreamed of the ballroom, rainbow mist in front of her eyes, that this is getting ridiculous. Her memories of the dance are still fuzzy, dim around the edges, but she’s pretty sure it’s just… the dance, in her dream, exactly the way it happened the first time. The people in their masks, and the pulsing song with words she can’t quite make out, and the Goblin King watching her with intent bi-colored eyes. The clock, counting out thirteen hours. Everyone watching, and laughing, and pressing close.

She spends the next year thinking, planning, sketching out everything she remembers: her dress, the room, where everyone was standing, their masks and clothes.

The night before her birthday, Sarah lies down, concentrating on the ballroom, deliberately picturing a different dress, and bites into her first peach since the Labyrinth, juice running down her wrist and sweet on her tongue, and falls asleep with the taste of it still on her lips.

The doors open and she steps through, skirts rustling. She looks down to a long, plain white skirt and gold tapestry-style belt, lifts a hand to her pinned-up hair and the flower circlet headband she’s wearing. Looks up to the Goblin King’s wide, startled eyes, and laughs in a startled exhale: she’s changed the memory. The dream.

She can’t remember now why, what for, only the sense that there was a purpose to it, and she looks around the ballroom for what it was she came for and can’t find it. When the hand is extended to her to dance, she takes it, until the laughter and the masked eyes become too much and she fights her way free and breaks the wall open.

Sarah opens her eyes, breathing hard, and punches her pillow in frustration. It’s not fair! Why can she never remember what she’s doing when she’s in the ballroom?

It’s not fair. But that’s the way it is. She’ll work harder next time.

***

Her second peach since the Labyrinth and the castle beyond the goblin city is eaten on a sunny day, some time around two in the afternoon as she’s walking to her algebra final, and tastes utterly normal. As the skin parts under her teeth and the flesh is torn away from the pit, Sarah hears the song from the ballroom, from her old music box, playing, and has a second of understanding one line. “As the world falls down,” someone sings, and she swallows her bite and the music vanishes.

It’s still sunny. Looking at her watch, Sarah sees that it’s 2:13 PM. “Okay,” she says, not entirely steady, and takes another bite.

She eats the entire peach without anything else happening. A peach smoothie the next day, and nothing happens. Her stepmother asks in surprise, as Sarah takes a helping of sliced peaches for dessert at dinner the day after she gets home, when she started eating peaches again. “Oh,” she says, lifting a bite to her mouth, “I’ve just really missed them lately.”

It’s not untrue. Before, Sarah just didn’t want the reminder. Now she has questions, and the peach is the only link to the ballroom since she gave away the music box the week after the Labyrinth.

She bites into a whole, fresh peach at breakfast and the hand at her side brushes a full, rustling skirt. Sarah swallows it and looks down at her jeans.

Okay.

By the night before her nineteenth birthday, home on summer break, Sarah has taken the first bite of a lot of peaches, and her sketched outline of the ballroom and the dance is much more detailed. She’s started taking dancing lessons at school, to her stepmother’s delight, and now she waltzes Toby around the living room, him standing on her shoes with his fingers clutched in hers, humming the song under her breath.

She looks in the mirror and sees Hoggle looking back at her, and smiles, waving hello. He looks exactly the same. She doesn’t, she’s cut her hair to skimming her shoulders and there’s an acne scar on her chin and she gained about forty pounds of muscle and fat and two extra inches of height, but he looks at her as if she’s still the fourteen-year-old girl who stole his jewels and stormed a goblin city with him, and ate a peach because he gave it to her.

She isn’t, and Sarah’s okay with that. After Hoggle leaves her sight, Sarah fixes her face, the person she is now, college sophomore studying Classics at Blackstock, into her mind.

She bites into a peach, and falls asleep with the juice coating her tongue.

The doors open and she steps through, skirts rustling. She looks down to a long, plain white skirt and gold tapestry-style belt, lifts a hand to her pinned-up hair and the flower circlet headband she’s wearing. Looks up to the Goblin King’s focused gaze and slightly-parted mouth.

Her fingers linger in her hair, and she frowns.

Her hair, she remembers suddenly, isn’t this long.

She’s looking for someone. But she’s pretty sure he’s looking for her, too, and the clock isn’t moving. There is, right now, plenty of time.

She moves into the center of the floor, and then stops, listening to the music. “Every thrill is gone, wasn’t too much fun at all,” and she hums along, joins in with, “As the world falls down… ”

There’s a tap on her shoulder. She turns, looks up into bi-colored eyes. Sarah holds out her hand.

He takes it, mouth curved in a bemused smile, sharp teeth gleaming, and she names him: “Jareth.

“If you wanted to talk to me, I’d think there were easier ways.”

“But so much less fun,” he answers, the first words she’s ever heard him say in the ballroom. The first words she’s heard him say since she realized he had no power over her, and said so out loud. “Sarah.”

She sets her hand on his waist. He sets his on her shoulder, and they waltz. As the song comes to an end, Jareth asks, “So, how are classes?” pronouncing the word as if he’s not entirely sure what it means.

Sarah stares at him, not quite believing the question. It’s the kind of thing a parent or someone from high school would ask, not Jareth. His smile widens, as if he’s enjoying her confusion. Another waltz begins, and she answers, narrowing her eyes, playing the game long enough to start figuring out the rules.

Her eyes open when he lets go of her hand. Sarah blinks up at her ceiling before looking over to her clock, the red glow that resolves into 3:47 AM, and rolls over with a groan to go back to sleep.

She dreams of nothing she remembers, this time, but there’s a long, pale feather tangled with the drawstrings of her shirt in the morning. Sarah has grapefruit with her breakfast out of pure spite and shoves Jareth out of her mind as she nibbles a marzipan peach.

She tucks the feather into her backpack anyway, when she goes back to Blackstock.

\- fin.


End file.
